The present disclosure relates generally to techniques for facilitating communication between two electronic devices and, more particularly, to techniques for controlling the power of communications signals between electronic devices, such as Bluetooth® enabled devices.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
In the marketplace today, there are a wide variety of electronic devices available for a wide variety of purposes. Such devices include cellular telephones, tablet computers, laptop computers, personal computers, televisions, headphones, Bluetooth® enabled watches, printers, and cameras, just to name a few. It is often desirable for one electronic device to communicate with one or more other electronic devices. Traditionally, such connections have been “hard-wired”, such that the devices had to be connected directly to one another by some sort of cabling or by cabling via a network interface. Such cabling is typically terminated by standardized connectors (e.g., USB, RS232, etc.) or by proprietary connectors, e.g. Apple's Lightning® connector, etc. Hence, not only does the cabling solution require a plethora of unsightly wires, it often requires specific types of cables and/or adaptors because of the wide variety of connectors and signaling schemes.
To address many of these concerns, various wireless technologies have become popular for facilitating communication between electronic devices. For example radio frequency (RF) technologies, such as WiFi (IEEE 802.11) and Bluetooth® (IEEE 802.15), are now commonly used by many electronic devices to facilitate communication without the need for cabling. Although such wireless interfaces address some of the problems with cabling, they are subject to their own disadvantages. For example, because wireless signals typically need to be amplified more than signals that travel on an actual conductor, electronic devices typically utilize more power when communicating wirelessly, thus reducing battery life.
In one particular example, two electronic devices may communicate with one another using Bluetooth®. In such situations, one device is typically the host, and the other device is typically considered a remote device. Once the devices are paired, the remote device will determine a received signal strength indication (RSSI), which is a measurement of the power present in the RF signal it receives from the host device. The higher the RSSI, the stronger the signal. When the remote device determines that the RSSI of the signal it receives falls below a certain level, it sends a signal to the host device to request that it increase the power of the signal it transmits. Typically, when a host device receives such a request, it increases the power of an internal amplifier that is typically part of its Bluetooth® chip set. While such internal amplifiers typically do not lead to undue power consumption by the host device, it may be undesirable to allow a remote device to dictate the output power of a host device in situations that could lead to undue power consumption by the host device.